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"Ready?" asked Mazer.
Cocktail nodded.
They braced their feet against opposite walls and pushed their way up the shaft. The dead Formics clustered at the wall, obstructing their view.
"Rotate the top forward," said Mazer. "Let the corpses pass."
They rotated the shield so it was horizontal. Mazer grabbed the Formics and pulled them to his side to clear the path. The bodies were wet and limp and bleeding. Others were blown into parts. An arm, a torso, a head. Mazer pushed back the instinct to vomit and moved quickly. When it was clear, he and Cocktail snapped the shield back into place and pushed on.
They didn't get far before they encountered more Formics. Mazer shot through the rifle slit. It was hard to miss. The Formics crumpled, bled, died. The glow bugs were in a frenzy, buzzing all around them, their luminescence filling the shaft. The shield had knocked their nests away. They shot back and forth across the shaft, bouncing off the wall.
Mazer and Cocktail pushed on. They could hear the radio chatter from inside the cargo bay. It didn't sound good. Shouts, explosions, quick orders. ZZ was down. Bolshakov, too. Both of them dead. The news washed over Mazer like a wave. There was nothing he could do but clear a path for the others.
Slowly, tediously, they charged up the shaft. Objects started pinging off the shield. Projectiles. Thin small metal needles about half the size of a pencil, fired from a Formic weapon.
"They're armed," said Cocktail.
He and Mazer fired, and those with the needle shooters fell.
"I can't see well," said Cocktail. "Too much obstruction."
Mazer checked the shaft ahead of them. It was clear. "Let's rotate and clear the path."
As soon as they rotated the shield, the glow bugs poured inside like water, shooting back down the shaft toward the cargo bay. Cocktail and Mazer furiously pulled at the dead Formics to get them out of the way.
A glint of light ahead of them in the shaft caught Mazer's eye. He turned in time to see a Formic holding a jar weapon. The light inside was swirling and ready to fire.
"LOWER THE SHIELD!" he shouted.
Too late. A thick glob of mucus slammed into Cocktail's chest, pulsing with light. Cocktail looked down at it, shook violently, and exploded.
Mazer was slammed against the inside of the shaft, stunned, disoriented. A red mist filled the air around him. Blood had splattered across his visor, obstructing his view. Ahead of him, through the haze, he saw a swirling disc of light.
Mazer steadied his arm, squeezed the trigger, and emptied his clip.
CHAPTER 23
Casualties
Lem stood at the helm of the Valas and watched the vids in the holofield with a sinking feeling. The strike team was getting hammered. It was chaos in the cargo bay. ZZ and Bolshakov had flatlined. Cocktail's biometrics had gone completely silent. The remaining helmetcams were projected all in front of him, but the movements were so erratic and fuzzy, it was difficult to tell what was happening.
A technician approached him. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Jukes, but we're getting strange reports from Earth."
"What type of reports?"
"The Formics, sir. They're all returning to the landers."
Lem followed the technician back to his console.
The tech had a vid on screen. "This is from surveillance cams in the city of Chenzhou." The tech pressed play. A Formic death squad was spraying a crowd of hundreds of people outside a rail station. Gas billowed forth from the Formics' wands, enveloping those trying to escape. Men and women gasped and fell. The Formics advanced in a wide line, meeting no resistance. A time code in the bottom of the feed was counting off the seconds.
"What am I supposed to see?" said Lem.
"Right here,
sir."
The Formics suddenly stopped spraying, turned around in unison, and ran.
